Christopher Pearse Cranch

Sonnet Xi. The Printing-Press. - Poem by Christopher Pearse Cranch

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IN boyhood's days we read with keen delightHow young Aladdin rubbed his lamp and raisedThe towering Djin whose form his soul amazed,Yet who was pledged to serve him day and night.But Gutenberg evoked a giant spriteOf vaster power, when Europe stood and gazedTo see him rub his types with ink. Then blazedAcross the lands a glorious shape of light,Who stripped the cowl from priests, the crown from kings,And hand in hand with Faith and Science wroughtTo free the struggling spirit's limèd wings,And guard the ancestral throne of sovereign Thought.The world was dumb. Then first it found its tongueAnd spake — and heaven and earth in answer rung.